The Journal of a Disappointed Man

About 1618, Ben Jonson suffered a similar calamity thro' a fire breaking out in his study. Many unpublished MSS. perished. A more modern and more tragic example I found recently in the person of an Australian naturalist, Dr. Walter Stimpson, who lost all his MSS., drawings, and collections in the great fire of Chicago, and was so excoriated by this irreparable misfortune that he never recovered from the shock, and died the following year a broken man and unknown. Of course the housemaid who lit the fire with the French Revolution is known to all, as well as Newton's "Fido, Fido, you little know what you have done." There are many dangers in preserving the labours of years in MS. form. Samuel Butler (of Erewhon) advised writing in copying ink and then pressing off a second copy to be kept in another and separate locality. My own precautions for these Journals are more elaborate. Those who know about it think I am mad. I wonder.... But I dare say I am a pathetic fool--an incredible self-deceiver! Anyhow--the "coffin" of raw material I sent down to T---- while I retain the two current volumes. This is to avoid Zeppelins. E---- took the "coffin" down for me on her way home from school, and at Taunton, inquisitive porters mistaking it, I suppose, for an infant's coffin carried it reverently outside the station and laid it down. She caught them looking at it just in time before her train left. Under her instructions they seized it by the brass handles and carried it back again. I sit now and with a good deal of curiosity fondle the idea of porters carrying about my Journals of confession. It's like being tickled in the palm of the hand.... Two volumes of abstracted entries I keep here, and, as soon as I am married, I intend to make a second copy of these.... Then all in God's good time I intend getting a volume ready for publication.